Today at the birdy palace (1st full day)
Yuppers! Got up there about 9:15 am or so and started the day by washing some perches and drop-cloths of all the poop! :P Oh boy, what fun! In all honesty though, that was a simple, easy job. Oh, and we got to staple in some astro-turf to the top of the stumps we buried last week.
Here is the photo of what he did last week, that being dig holes for the log perches, then erect said perches. From furthest to closest is Storm (golden eagle), Manwe (means master of the wind, young bald eagle) and Hank (adult bald eagle).
After such, we got to help move one of the 4 or 5 meat freezers that they have here, followed by painting a room and washing out some maggot filled, rotten meat infested garbage cans. STINKY! Heh heh, oh well, worth it, since we got to watch the two daily flying demonstrations and generally just hang out with them.
And, well, the day ended with something I had never expected. They got a truckload of raptor food in. Raptor food is, well, chicks. You know, the soft, fluffy, cuddly little yellow things that come from eggs and grow to be chickens. Yeah, a truckload full of them, dead. Hundreds of these things. And we had to scoop them into trays and put them into freezers. It smelled
pretty nasty, but not too bad. WOrse was touching the things... It is just unnerving. They still look cute, but they lay so limp... They had just been killed earlier in the day, too, so they were all warm still.
Those birds are noisy fellows! Except, well, the eagles make noises that sound more fitting to a seagull, to be honest. Usually in movies and media what you hear as an 'eagle cry' is actually the sound of a hawk. And a funny thing is that the peregrine falcon makes it's squawky calls without really opening it's beak, so you can hardly tell which bird is making the call!
And the new snowy owl they received last week is settled, an all nice and cozy with 'Salt,' the snowy they already had. I really hope that the two end up pairing up and mating next year perhaps, because I do love the snowies!
PHOTOS: http://sg.game-host.org/Pics/Photos/PNWRaptors%20July03%2007/ Browse through, all resized. Originals in RAR.